National "111" Center for Cellular Regulation and Molecular Pharmaceutics

Date：2018-01-19 Clicks：84

Background

The National "111" plan was jointly initiated and sponsored in 2006 by the Minister of Education and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. Its main objective is to promote research innovation and brain-gain in China through interactions and research collaborations with overseas research leaders. It also aims at training high-quality young people including graduate students and young researchers. The plan initially accepted applications only from Chinese top institutions including the so-called 985 and 211 universities until 2016 when it started to also invite applications from a limited number of province-sponsored (or local) institutions such as Hubei University of Technology (HBUT). HBUT applied in 2015 for the first time and became the only one in Hubei Province to be selected for the national competition although it didn't succeed at the end. In its second application in 2016, HBUT was again the only one representing Hubei and, this time, was granted. The HBUT National "111" Center for Cellular Regulation and Molecular Pharmaceutics was unveiled in late 2017 and will run for the next five years.

The makeup of the Center

The Center is located on the 7th and 8th floors of the Light Industry Building, affiliated with the School of Biological Engineering and Food Science, and composed of 9 principal investigators (Drs Xing-Zhen Chen, Yajie Tang, Zhengding Su, Binlei Liu, Xianmin Xia, Kanggong Hu, Honghao Sun, Weihong Xie, and Jun Wang) and their team members. The overseas partners of the Center are world renowned researchers from Canada, USA, Germany and Denmark, with the leading investigator Dr Marek Michalak, a professor at the University of Alberta and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Other overseas researchers include Drs Declan Ali (U of Alberta), Joel Weiner (U of Alberta, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada), Veit Flockerzi (U of Saarland, Fellow of the German National Academy of Science), Consolato Sergi (U of Alberta), Leonides Tsiokas (U of Oklahoma), Youmei Zhang (Case Western Reserve U), Minghui Zou (Georgia State U), Yan Xu (National Research Council of Canada), Shenghan Lai (Johns Hopkins U), and Thomas Andresen (Technical U of Denmark).

Research and funding

The research within the Center focuses on 1) elucidating molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying how the function of drug-related target proteins such as membrane or disease-associated proteins is regulated and 2) discovering molecules that interact with disease-associated target proteins to correct their function that is altered genetically or by acquired (eg environmental) factors.

Financially the Center is supported by the National and Provincial governments as well as HBUT to exercise its missions, in particular, research collaborations and joint trainings of high-quality young people within the Center and from overseas partner laboratories as well. The members of the Center are dedicated to be productive during the 5-year tenure and together aim at an extension for another 5-year.